Dust UpRising Atlantic temperatures are caused by a lack of dust in the overlying atmosphere.

New species of robber fly

INTO THE FIELDFrom the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles CountyBackyard Biodiversity
The Malaise trapa tent-like apparatus with an attached collecting bottleis not named for some sinking feeling but for its Swedish inventor, entomologist René Edmond Malaise. When Brian Brown, Curator of Entomology at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, set up a trap in his yard, he was not expecting to find anything particularly unusual. But one robber fly proved to be a new species in a genus unknown on the U.S. west coast. Since then Brown (who previously led Angelinos in an informal citywide spider survey) has bagged other rare specimens.
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REVIEWSOn May 27, 1990, 78,932 Nike shoes went overboard in the mid-Pacific. Their arrival on Oregon beaches launched Curtis Ebbesmeyer, a consulting oceanographer, on a long and distinguished career as a scientific beachcomber and expert on ocean currents. In Flotsametrics and the Floating World, reviewed by Laurence A. Marschall, Ebbesmeyer shares tales of drifting objects hes encountered over the years, from rubber ducks to bowling balls. He reminds us that before setting out in 1492, Columbus saw tropical seeds, stalks of bamboo, carved sticks, and abandoned kayaks washed ashore on the Azores. Those alien objects beckoned him to follow the ocean drift back to where they came from. Simple drifting objects have enabled Ebbesmeyer and his colleagues to trace the paths of eleven gigantic ocean gyres. Also under review are Opening Goliath, a book about a network of underground tunnels in Minnesotaand the dangers of caving; and Pineapple Culture, a book about the history of what European colonial powers considered the quintessential tropical fruit.